Research progress on the corrosion behavior of titanium alloys

Abstract Titanium and its alloys show outstanding application prospects in many industrial fields due to their high specific strength, good corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance, etc. However, at present the corrosion failure of Ti alloys is attracted great attention with gradual increasing applications. The different localized corrosion forms are introduced in this review, including galvanic corrosion, crevice corrosion, pitting corrosion, hydrogen-induced cracking, stress corrosion crack, microbiological corrosion, corrosion fatigue, and corrosion wear. Among them, the corrosion failure caused by stress corrosion crack and hydrogen-induced cracking is the most serious, accounting for about 40–60% of the actual failure accidents. The effects of temperature, pressure, corrosive media and microstructure on the failure of titanium alloys are discussed. Particularly noteworthy, F− is extremely aggressive to the passive film of titanium alloys. The corrosion behavior of titanium alloys applied in aerospace, marine, petrochemical industries and biomedical environments are introduced. In the above environments, the passive film is most easily damaged and difficult to passive in high temperature and oxygen-deficient environments. The current controversies in the corrosion mechanism have also been proposed, especially the stress corrosion that has the most serious impact on titanium alloys, and its mechanism will be the focus of future research.